


was blind but now (i see)

by queenklu



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angels the way they used to look in the bible, Discombobulation, Kissing, M/M, Misunderstandings, Temporary Blindness, Too many eyes, potential body horror depending on your view of angels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-24 01:42:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20018173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenklu/pseuds/queenklu
Summary: The discombobulation of it all!___In which being discorporated is a little more disorienting that either of them expect.





	was blind but now (i see)

**Author's Note:**

> Part of this was written in the lobby of the U.S. Embassy in Edinburgh while getting an emergency passport, 0/10 do not recommend.

Aziraphale had never been discorporated before. For one, it had always seemed like a terrible idea--even with all the paperwork and chastisement for wasting one of Her vessels aside, the thought of losing this shape, which he had so pleasingly worn-in like a pair of good shoes, was...unpleasant. Unfortunate. Unwanted. He was a creature of habit and he didn’t _like_ the thought of looking in the mirror and seeing someone...new.

And what would Crowley think, he fretted, assuming they would survive the apocalypse, assuming Aziraphale would be recorporated, assuming a great many things wherein his oldest friend would be able to have an opinion on Aziraphale’s corporeal form. What if he came back as lanky and fleshless! What if he, too, had red hair! Crowley barely tolerated humans having the audacity to mimic his hair color, with or without genetic intent--he might not speak to Aziraphale again!

But then--but no, Aziraphale shook himself, looked down at his own hands and tummy and knees and felt the familiar weight of himself against the bus bench, now sans the uncomfortable press of an angelic sword against his posterior. He’d already survived discorporation, hadn’t he? He had. And as he found his thread of thought again he remembered where it had begun:

None of the angels who’d ever been recorporated had ever mentioned...the discombobulation.

Or...perhaps they had? He couldn’t...remember things linearly at the moment. The Present seemed an awfully ephemeral state of being.

They had survived the apocalypse. He remembered now. But in a moment it was gone again, and he found himself wondering what they would do when they got to Tadfield, despite the fact that, had he looked up, he would have found a helpful sign proclaiming him to be in Tadfield already.

In any case--Aziraphale thought, squaring his shoulders--at any point in his long existence when he was feeling particularly baffled, Aziraphale had always pretended he knew precisely what he was doing, and (as it were) carried on.

After what could have been 20 seconds or, oh dear, hopefully not an hour of thinking on what the unofficial national motto used to mean before it was plastered on tea towels and undergarments, a rallying cry of keeping one’s chin up in the face of egregious suffering vs. a complacency to all sorts of egregious wrong....goodness, he’d lost the plot again.

The _discombobulation_ of it all!

The only thing which seemed crystal clear was the he should not let on to Crowley. The poor dear had seemed so upset to find Aziraphale discorporated...or was it someone else he was upset over losing? Aziraphale couldn’t recall, and he doubted he’d been able to tell at the time. God willing, Crowley hadn’t noticed.

“Oh,” he exclaimed, as a bus lumbered into view. He felt like they’d been waiting for it simultaneously no time and all the time in the word. He blinked. “It says Oxford on it.” Were they going to Oxford?

“Yeah, but he’ll drive to London anyway. He just won’t know why,” Crowley said, dear, dear Crowley; he needn’t be worried with Aziraphale’s discombobulidity on top of everything else, Aziraphale thought, vowing (again, though he didn’t realize it) to keep his dear friend out of it.

“I suppose I should get him to drop me off at the bookshop,” Aziraphale said, thoughts so tied up in how tired Crowley looked--how he must be longing to curl up in a warm comforter, and how Aziraphale would have to seek the same sort of comfort in the pages of his books and why that didn’t seem as appealing as it should--that he didn’t at first notice the way Crowley turned to look at him behind dark glasses.

“It burned down,” Crowley said, with incredible gentleness, “remember?”

All at once Aziraphale _did_ remember, but more than that, was _there_ \--stumbling into the circle, Shadwell screaming, the tip of a candle rolling over even as every one of his atoms was torn apart--

\--and Crowley in a bar, face raw with crying, smelling of burnt glue, and wood, and paper--

“You can stay at my place,” Crowley said, drawing him back to the here, the now, still with that unshakeable care in his voice, “if you like?”

The cloudy pieces of his mind snapped into focus. This had _not_ happened before. Yet. Heretofore. Ever.

Aziraphale _wanted_ , with a fierceness almost as disorienting as the misplaced timeline of his thoughts--but he couldn’t trust it as a Now feeling. Was it old? Was it new? Was he in this moment, or the next? And so he babbled something that would fit with any time, or should have: “I don’t think my side would like that.”

“You don’t have a side anymore,” Crowley said, firmer, but not unkind. And before the sting could set in, “Neither of us do.”

Now that, Aziraphale thought with an unmooring sledge of something shifting in his chest, _couldn’t_ be true.

“We’re on our own side,” Crowley finished, catching Aziraphale where he slid, uprighting him.

Oh. ...well.

Crowley said something else, something to do with Agnes’ prophecy, but Aziraphale didn’t hear it over the slow, tumbled, churning of his mind. He wanted so badly to hold on to this moment, to ponder it, to keep it close, but was it this moment? Or the one before? Or after? And the bus slid to a stop, and they boarded, and the most Aziraphale could manage to keep hold of was the spark which told him ‘ _Stick close to him, don’t let him go.’_

~*~

There was something not quite right with Aziraphale, though Crowley couldn’t put his finger on it. Well, they’d just averted the end of the world. Poor angel was likely exhausted. And he’d never really learned how to sleep, had he?

Crowley knew exhaustion. One doesn’t fall asleep for eighty years without experiencing something like the feeling in his body--the bone deep grind, the slog, the grim, foggy drag of thoughts across the mildewed concrete of a brain which has grown too used to the very human concept of a nap.

Perhaps it was something Crowley could teach Aziraphale--they’d get to his flat, and the angel would demure over taking the bed, and Crowley would say, “ooohh, well, I suppose we could share,” and maybe Aziraphale would bluster a bit more--or maybe he’d blush!--but his body would be so tired, wouldn’t it? All brand new after being--

Crowley swallowed sharply. No point in remaining upset over something which had been fixed. Like crying over a smashed cup already miracled back together. There his angel was, arm against his arm, warm and smelling of petrichor and old paper as he should, and _alive._ Alive, alive, alive. Very much corporeal. Not a wobbly, translucent spirit in sight.

So when would the roof of Crowley’s mouth stop _aching_.

Aziraphale was silent. Maybe that’s what felt wrong. He was so used to Aziraphale’s voice wrapping ‘round him wherever they went, new story or retelling of some encounter, taste, book that Aziraphale wanted to share. That Aziraphale was quiet now said...something, but then again, Crowley was tired enough that his ears had started to ring, so perhaps...perhaps…

Crowley fell asleep, and awoke some time later to the hiss of the bus hydraulics and the press of Aziraphale’s shoulder against his cheek. Crowley sat bolt upright. If he had been drooling, there was no evidence by the time he shoved his sunglasses back in place.

Aziraphale didn’t comment, or even seem to notice--a fact Crowley was too busy being thankful for to realize it was yet another indicator of something being...off. It wasn’t the first time he’d fallen asleep on the angel--most memorably in the belly of the Ark, surrounded by a hundred heartsick children--but Aziraphale always said _something,_ even if it was a cheerful, “Sleep well?”

Crowley didn’t know why this time felt particularly embarrassing. Maybe it was the whole ‘our own side’ business. In any case, he felt a sudden and compelling need for a breather before seeing Aziraphale in his flat, navigating the whole bed business--he just, he needed--

“You go on in,” he said, nodding at the gated entry, which obediently popped open in invitation. “I’ll be. I’m gonna. Stretch my legs.”

“Of course,” Aziraphale said, ducking his head. Not smiling. Crowley should show him in. It would be polite. But the staircase wouldn’t let him get lost, and Crowley felt as though the night time pressing against his glasses might shatter them, and when he felt like this it was always better to...take a walk.

Crowley didn’t wait to watch him go inside, but he did hear the gate creak and click behind him as he slunk down the dimly lit street. Was cowardice a demonic trait? Or a human one? He knew heaven disavowed the emotion entirely, though there were certainly moments where he’d seen Aziraphale...shy away from the new, or temptatious. And plenty of cowardly demons.

Aziraphale had never been in Crowley’s flat before. He didn’t want to see Aziraphale...pretending to like it. The bare walls, the open empty spaces. Oh, hell, he’d probably spot the statue right away. Well, let him master his disgust out of Crowley’s eyesight. His skin still felt paper thin, despite the nap--he wasn’t sure he could withstand it, at the moment.

Stopping time. He’d stopped time. At the ringing truth Aziraphale had provided--”I’ll never speak to you again”--he’d drug his nails into the fabric of the universe and torn it asunder.

And now the, the being, angel, shape, container of his dearest and oldest and most cherished and most _loved_ friend...well, that friend was in his flat. Crowley’s palms, against all wish and reason, began to sweat. Aziraphale would be at the top of the stairs by now, or down the hall, and he’d reach out a hand and push open the door--

At that precise moment, barely fifty feet down the block, Crowley’s flat exploded.

Soundlessly, but with no less violence.

The blast knocked Crowley off his feet, cracked window panes, splintered concrete. Crowley twisted upright from bloody knees and turned, lips parting in horror at the eruption of angelfire spilling from his apartment.

 _Heaven_ , Crowley’s shrieking mind supplied, _heaven came for him_. Far, far sooner than they could have anticipated.

Crowley reached for the scream as he began to run and tried to pull it from his throat--but nothing happened. What had screaming Aziraphale’s name in a burning room got him last time? But at least then Heaven had _wanted_ Aziraphale _alive,_ and now--

And _now--_

For all the glass littering the street, and the rough-hewn split down the middle of the asphalt, the night was silent. No birds, no screaming, and Crowley realized his feet didn’t even make a sound as he ran to the ruins of the gate and threw it aside, slicing his palms on twisted iron. Go--Sa-- _something, anything,_ could he even scream?

Angelfire washed over him, and it hurt, it _hurt_ , but not in the way Hell could hurt a person, no--Heaven was supposed to feel good, wasn’t it, and so it felt so _good_ that it set every nerve alight, and then _more._ Crowley cried out and flinched back, and it was that sound in his mouth but not in his ears that made him realize the world wasn’t silent. It was deafening. And the sound was a low, keening _wail._

“AZIRAPHALE!” Crowley’s mouth made the word, and his teeth ached like sweets on a cavity as he leapt up the stairs, or what should have been the stairs, but he could barely see. His sunglasses protected his retinas, but only barely. “AZIRAPHALE, WHERE ARE YOU?”

The wail drowned him out. Crowley threw his hand out, found the familiar, heavy weight of his door, and flung it open.

Crowley remembered very little of Heaven (on purpose--a home which cast him out with the intent to forget him was not something worth remembering) but some things left an indelible impression. Entities comprised of endless wings. A thousand wheels within wheels. All in all things had been much messier before God settled on the four-limbs-one-head business both sides now favored. Crowley’s true form had been gold and rubies, long lines twining together in dizzying knots. Aziraphale--

Aziraphale, on first look, was pure light.

He was stood, if such a being could be called standing, in the place where Crowley’s hallway could have met the main room had there existed shadows enough to allow it. No suggestion of an outline, but that was where the light was hottest, and Crowley felt another wave of indescribable pleasure/pain crest over him hard enough to make his scuffed knees buckle.

The wail began to fall, no less full of agony, but no longer reaching a crescendo. _Worse_. An understanding that the pain wouldn’t go away.

Crowley crawled, beyond dignity. Hands he couldn’t see on a floor that wasn’t there. His spine writhed, and he had a sudden burst of insight-- _Oh, I’m an idiot--_ before he shifted and slithered much faster to the base of where Aziraphale would be, if he had human legs.

But of course he didn’t, and Crowley bent his body up, tongue flicking out to feel the edges--if there were edges--and when he stood on legs again his hands filled with feathers, and a hundred eyes hid in the creases, all of them squeezed shut. Crowley’s own eyes were sightless, sunglasses tumbled away as his retinas burned, but he felt the tension in each crease beside each eye, the unwavering line of wet lashes against his fingertips.

“Aziraphale,” Crowley said, soft, muted. His hands burned, and he thought deliriously of those hot towels in a spa which were meant to be nice but actually took the top layer of skin away in the heat. “Angel, what is it? Who’s here? Who’s hurting you?”

As if he could do-- _anything_ , against the will of Heaven. Except die first, trying.

The wail shifted to a moan, tormented and pitiable. “ **CROWLEY** ,” the angel said, and oh, some of the eyes were mouths, shifting under Crowley’s palms before he yanked his touch away.

The being cried out, and leaned into him again, against his chest this time. “Shh, shh,” Crowley said, pure nonsense, joints trembling with the effort to stay standing. Everything hurt. Everything felt unbelievably good. He swallowed against a sound he didn’t want to make. “Aziraphale...talk to me, dearheart, what happened?”

A hand formed, seemingly with the sole purpose of clutching at Crowley’s shirt, as if he was trying to get away. The light was receding, or--or was that darkness creeping into the edges of his vision? Crowley swayed. “Dear-- Er. Angel, do you think we could sit down? I’m--”

“ **NOT HERE** ,” a hundred mouths said with one voice, and the hand was followed by another, this one gripping Crowley tighter than before to drag him, stumbling, across a room he couldn’t see. His back hit a corner, and he stopped trying to orient himself in his own flat. Anything, anything, as long as his legs could finally crumple beneath his weight, Aziraphale a solid-though-unidentifiable presence against his chest.

His arms were bare, Crowley realized, and couldn’t stop his own hand from closing around Aziraphale’s vulnerable wrist. He couldn’t see anything--that was a blessing, wasn’t it?--just fields and fields of white. Surely that excused it, the way his hands slid up Aziraphale’s arms, reaching for the edges of his shape? A shivering sigh, a hundred shivering sighs filled the air, and Crowley _stopped, immediately,_ but there was the curve of a shoulder under his fingertips, feathers shifting into skin. Like Crowley was molding him out of clay.

“Now, what’s all this?” he croaked, dry as the first desert. “What’s upset you, hm? Whatever Gabriel did, or, or Metatron or the Almighty Herself--you’re still here, aren’t you? It can’t be all bad.”

It could, of course it could. Wouldn’t it be just like either side to give a sentence and then wait to carry it out, knowing the dread would be as excruciating as the final ax’s fall? Crowley’s arms convulsed, an unconscious serpentine flex to pull him closer, safer. He felt Aziraphale’s forehead against his lips before he realized how badly he wanted to press a kiss there, soft curls of his hair against Crowley’s cheek.

“ **Oh…** ” Only a few dozen mouths this time, and Crowley felt the exquisite agony of angelic light begin to pulse as it faded in his arms. His eyesight remained stubbornly white. Well. Not the first to be blinded by the light. If they survived divine punishment-- _please, please, let him survive,_ Crowley thought to anyone listening--then it would be a small price to pay.

“ **You really are here, oh, oh,”** Aziraphale murmured, and by the end of it, only in one voice: “Crowley.”

“Of course I am,” Crowley promised, and wanted to laugh but was afraid it would come away wet. There was a solidness to the space before him now, additional weight to the floorboards beneath him. Aziraphale pressed closer, Crowley’s hands shifting to his back and the last trace of feathers--not entirely human shaped, then. Crowley tipped his face up and thought he could feel the shift of air against his cheeks as Aziraphale’s wings moved. “Where else would I be at the end of the world?”

A sound against his chest, somewhere between a sniffle and a cry. “I...I forgot.”

A chill shot through the serpentine coils of his spine. “They tried to…” He could barely say it, too furious to speak. “They made you _forget me_?”

How _dare_ they. Oh, he’d tear them from Heaven with his bare hands--

“No,” Aziraphale whimpered softly, hands petting urgent messages against Crowley’s collarbone. “No, no, dear--my-- Oh, Crowley, it’s the _discombobulation_.” A sudden, sharp gasp. “Crowley, what happened? What are those marks--?”

“No. Wait. Go back,” Crowley said, catching Aziraphale’s hands and only fumbling a little. He wished he could look at the angel properly, but settled for knowing he’d stilled in his grasp. “What ‘discombobulation?’”

Aziraphale hesitated before mumbling, “From being discorporated.”

For a moment Crowley was back in that burning room, but only a moment; then back, though he was certainly gripping Aziraphale too tightly. He couldn’t make himself let go. He’d float away.

“Explain,” he said, “Please.” _Take as long as you like_ , he didn’t say. _Let me keep hearing your voice._

Aziraphale did, though it didn’t take nearly as long as Crowley could have wished. Discorporation was a nasty business. Dagon, Lord of the Files, had been discorporated by a rogue fish bone and misfiled Crowley’s paperwork for the better part of a decade. Why hadn’t Crowley remembered?

Possibly because they’d been stopping the end of the world.

“I couldn’t remember why I had come to your flat,” Aziraphale continued in a quiet voice. Something about the tone, the space between their bodies, said that he was frowning, that he was looking at Crowley, so Crowley kept his lids low and his expression something like encouraging. “But it made sense that I’d come here looking for you. And that it must have been urgent, because you’ve never-- That is, I’ve always managed to find you before-- But then. There you weren’t. Instead there was a great big puddle of _holy water_ \--”

“Oh angel,” Crowley sighed, and was utterly unprepared for Aziraphale shoving him.

Just a little shove, but heartfelt and pointed, fingers jabbed against his chest. “How could you be so stupid?” Aziraphale demanded. Another shove. “Leaving a mess like that on the floor! You were dead tired when we arrived, you could have walked right into it!”

Crowley would have given quite a lot to see the fury on the angel’s face at this moment; as it was, it was difficult enough to smother a grin. “You wouldn’t have let me,” he said, with such supreme confidence that Aziraphale gave a sputtering huff. “Oh, angel, I’m sorry. It’s just Ligur. Or what’s left of him.”

“Yes, I understand that _now,_ ” Aziraphale said. His hands left Crowley, possibly to put against his own face as his next words were muffled, and Crowley didn’t let himself chase after that grounding touch. He might have held on a little tighter to Aziraphale’s shoulders, though. “You...is this what you meant by ‘insurance policy?’ Is this what you’ve _always_ meant?”

“Of course,” Crowley squawked, mind scrambling. “What did you--”

“I thought you meant to obliterate _yourself_ ,” Aziraphale spat, sounding wretched again. “An escape hatch, if you ever--if the world ever seemed too bleak or our ‘Rivalry’ stopped being...being enough to--”

“ _Angel_ ,” he begged, pawing too hard at him now, at the shifting cloth on his shoulders. It felt as thin as spiderweb, like it should snag on this roughness of his hands. Familiar. A shock enough to bind the cacophony in his mind to one singular voice: “I would never. Could never. Are you listening?” He gave Aziraphale a little shake, because he couldn’t _see,_ couldn’t tell. “I will never leave you here alone.”

A long, shuddering breath. Crowley wondered if he was nodding.

Against his better judgement he began thinking of the other sights he’d never see again: no more nods, no cheery waves, no delighted grins. No more the shape of Aziraphale’s mouth curling around a spoon. Oh well. A small price to pay, as long as the world still held all those things to make Aziraphale smile.

“My dear,” Aziraphale said, suddenly stern. “I do--I am sure, now, that I remember you went for a walk.”

Crowley’s smile was lopsided. He hoped it looked carefree. “Yes.”

“And on this walk,” Aziraphale continued, “did you happen to _lose a fight with a wasp’s nest?”_

“Hmm?” Crowley turned his attention inward and shooed away the last currents of adrenaline--he did hurt, he realized with some surprise. His fingers especially felt like he’d done a walking handstand through the longest church in Christendom, though the fabric of Aziraphale’s clothing had soothed it somewhat. Now Aziraphale caught his wrists and pulled his grip away with a cry.

“Oh, Crowley, your hands!”

“‘S nothing,” Crowley promised, firmly telling himself he was _not_ unmoored--the angel still held him tight, he could not drift away.

“It is _not_ nothing, you look as though--oh. ...Oh,” Aziraphale mourned. “Oh, Crowley. I did this to you.”

“You couldn’t hurt me, angel,” Crowley scoffed, quietly--and then not-as-quietly choked as Aziraphale raised his hand up, and something unmistakably soft pressed against his knuckles in a kiss.

He jerked back. This was worse, worse, a thousand times worse than touching angelfire. That was unintentional, consequential pain--because, fine, Crowley had lied when he said Aziraphale couldn’t hurt him, because he could, he had, but he never _intended_ to. There was intent in this. Aziraphale put his mouth on Crowley’s skin with a purpose, even if the purpose was to...to heal, or apologize, or…

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said, ever so gently, “Please…”

Crowley gave his hands back. The intent was not to harm, and so he couldn’t be hurt by it.

 _I don’t even like you,_ the angel had told him--what, yesterday? An age ago? _You do,_ he’d shot back, so sure of it in that moment. Surer still, now.

Pain radiated away from the press of Aziraphale’s lips. One kiss for every knuckle, every joint in his fingers. His fingertips. Five kisses for each palm. Crowley let it flow through him like water. His hands were shaking, but that was alright, wasn’t it? He was outside his own body. Already in the time a few heartbeats from now, when they would no longer be touching. He couldn’t bear to live in this moment.

“Better?” Aziraphale’s voice whispered across his skin.

“I’m sure it is, angel,” Crowley heard himself say, at a distance.

A beat. “What do you mean?”

Aziraphale let go. Crowley lowered his traitorous hands to his lap.

“Crowley,” the angel said, “Look at me.”

Crowley had owned this vessel for more than six thousand years. He knew every shape it could make, every sound. And yet in this moment, when he needed it most, he could not fathom how to hold his face. He made his lids drop, almost slits. He tried a smile. “Am I not?”

An _angry_ sound. Crowley flinched back. He couldn’t remember Aziraphale truly angry--perhaps the time when a loud German tourist had spilled his coffee down a stack of first editions, and found himself instantaneously cursed with an extreme caffeine intolerance though, miraculously, all the books had been fine. No, even angrier than that.

“Oh, I’m a _damned_ idiot,” Aziraphale growled, and caught Crowley’s face in both hands. “Close your eyes. Hold still.”

“Angel,” Crowley tried to be gentle, because there were some things even miracles couldn’t counter, but Aziraphale told him in no uncertain terms to _hush._ Crowley’s jaw snapped shut.

He closed his eyes.

Kissing his hands had been the knife’s edge of torture. Aziraphale pressing his mouth feather-soft against the paper-thin skin of Crowley’s eyelids was unbearable.

He jerked his face away before Aziraphale could feel the mortifying gathering of moisture beneath his lashes, taste the salt--but Aziraphale’s hands followed him, gently, so gently brushing the corners of his eyes.

“Oh, my dear, dearest boy,” he whispered, and kissed one eyelid, and then the other. And then ducked his head, so that Crowley could feel silken curls brush against his brow.

“Open?”

Crowley opened his eyes.

His eyelashes clumped together. For a brief, blurry moment, he was sure it had only half worked, and was elated anyway--a smudged, colored-smeared Aziraphale to look at was still better than none--but then he blinked, and the tears cleared away.

“There you are,” Aziraphale said, smiling small at first, then big, then small again. Crowley loved each one, and all the smiles in between.

“Here I am,” Crowley croaked.

Aziraphale didn’t drop his hands, but something in the way he held him shifted, cherishing. “Better?” Aziraphale asked, though he knew the answer.

Perhaps it was the absence of Aziraphale’s face, however briefly, that he could read it so clearly now. Or perhaps it was the Aziraphale was allowing himself to feel it, show it, what Crowley had in the heat of the moment at the end of the world, known to be true: _I like you. I do._

And maybe it was this clarity. Maybe it was elation at surviving the unsurvivable multiple times in the last however-many hours. In any case, Crowley found himself suddenly struck with a fragment of complete certainty that he _would_ be able to survive the next few moments, no matter what they would be.

“Almost.”

“Almost?” Aziraphale’s brow began to crease with concern. Then confusion. Then smoothed out entirely as Crowley reached up and tapped his own bottom lip.

“Missed a spot,” he said, cheeky and giddy with it. He could _see_ \--he would get to see Aziraphale blush and roll his eyes and call him ‘incorrigible.’ He wouldn’t get a kiss. He’d already gotten a dozen kisses. How could he even want for one more?

Aziraphale _did_ blush. And he _did_ huff a little laugh under his breath.

And then, with his hands still cupping Crowley’s face, he tilted it up, and he kissed him.

It was not, at all, like being healed. It was not at all like being torn apart. It was the warmest kind of heat that filled him up and over, overflowing. He forgot to breathe. He forgot he didn’t need to breathe.

His nails cut into Aziraphale’s robe, pulling him closer, clumsy--it _was_ a robe, he’d noticed dimly when he first opened his eyes, angelic only in material, not the cut or shape--and Aziraphale went more than willingly, until they were pressed together almost too close to keep kissing. Aziraphale curled an arm around his head, bracing and protecting and claiming all at once, and kissed him _harder,_ kissed and kissed and only broke to kiss again, like it was the coming together that felt the best, no matter how horrible it was to part.

In the end it was Crowley who was shaking too badly to continue, though Aziraphale didn’t let him pull very far away. They rested head-to-head together, and remembered one after another how to pull air into their lungs and out again.

“Dearheart...”

“Hmm?” Crowley had to shut his eyes and count his atoms, or Aziraphale would find himself with a lapful of snake. Then his hearing caught up with his brain, and his atoms nearly scattered anyway.

“You called me that, didn’t you?” Aziraphale said, fingertips carding gently through the hair at the nape of Crowley’s neck. “I didn’t imagine it?”

“No,” Crowley mumbled, muffled against Aziraphale’s shoulder. “You didn’t.”

“Ah,” the angel said, and gave a soft full-body wiggle of delight. “I thought not.”

Crowley squeezed his eyes shut one last time, then forced them open, forced himself to lift his head and meet Aziraphale’s calm gaze.

“Angel,” he started, voice tellingly hoarse. “How’s… I mean. The discombobulation…”

“Oh!” Aziraphale stopped. Thought about it. Crossed and uncrossed his eyes. “Well, my dear, now that you mention it,” he began, and tightened his grip on Crowley’s hair when he began to pull away. Crowley went very still. While it was true that angels and demons were largely sexless unless they made an effort, Crowley felt very much in that moment that he needn’t use hardly any effort at all. Aziraphale fixed him with a look which seemed to say he understood the feeling entirely.

“I feel very much myself,” Aziraphale finished, very firmly, before he relaxed his grip to comb through Crowley’s hair again. “It almost feels like--oh, what are those things computers need? Recalibration! It’s almost as if feeling one’s absolute lowest followed by several moments of complete euphoria were enough to...fill in the blanks, as it were. I can only half recommend it,” he said, giving Crowley little glances under his lashes, “The second half quite, ah, makes up for the first.”

“Oh does it?” Crowley said, not bothering to fight back a grin. It was an unfamiliar feeling, utter contentment. Terrifying. Electric.

Aziraphale’s gaze went shiveringly soft, soft enough Crowley felt he might sink into it, like a bath just the right side of scalding. Crowley closed his eyes and took several not-steadying-enough breaths, not helped in the least by Aziraphale pressing another tender kiss to his temple.

“I’m so sorry it took me such a...such a dreadfully long time,” Aziraphale whispered. “The paths in my head are worn so smooth. How sure I was that you didn’t care, and then did care but in the wrong way, and then I did ask but you were still so upset about Caligula--”

He ignored the strangled bleat that burst from Crowley’s throat-- _"_ _ _C_ aligula???” _ \--and only hushed him and pet his hair some more. “And then,” he continued, “even as we grew closer as friends I just grew more terrified that it would put you in _danger_ , that I would bring about your permanent destruction by my own weakness, so when you asked me for the holy water I could barely--you do promise that mess in your hallway is what you always intended it for?”

Aziraphale gave him such a look Crowley could only croak, “Yes, I--yes,” and cling all the tighter when Aziraphale murmured darkly, “Well, that’s alright then,” as if the angel weren’t dismantling eons of life history between them.

“So,” Crowley licked his lips and tried again, only a little better, “So when did--”

And bless him, Aziraphale didn’t make him say it all. Only kissed him again, almost as devastating. “The books,” he said against Crowley’s mouth, and kissed him again, “You saved the books.”

Crowley had been to magnetic north precisely once, on assignment. The dizzying and incapacitating inability to orient oneself was, as such, fractionally familiar to what he was experiencing now. Minus the sensation of freezing one’s entire bollocks off.

“I...I kept it,” he managed, somehow, though he must have sounded daft. “The statue. From the church. I went back.”

“Did you really?” Aziraphale said, surprise turning to tenderness when Crowley nodded numbly at the corner where it was stashed, though bless him if he could tear his eyes away from Aziraphale to look at it. “Didn’t it hurt you?”

Giving up on words, Crowley gave his head a shake, which in this case did in fact mean ‘yes but it was worth it. I’d live in a church if it made you happy, if it meant I woke up every day and you smiled at me.’

Aziraphale sighed a little, as though he heard the truth anyway. He caught one of Crowley’s hands and held it to his own dear face, and Crowley saw how the skin was pink and new, freshly healed but raw. “I don’t like when you’re hurt,” he said, with intent, at such a low register Crowley felt snakeskin break out across his ribs.

He was asking for a promise. Crowley wanted more than anything to give it.

His thumb smoothed the skin under Aziraphale’s blue, blue eye. “Hell might have other ideas, angel.”

A spark, a flicker of that angelfire always (almost always) so carefully banked. “We’ll best them,” Aziraphale decreed with all the thrumming certainty of an edict from on high. Crowley wanted to laugh, and found himself too weak to stop it. Wasn’t this just like his angel? So waveringly full of doubt until the moment he decided to love a thing--food, books, the blessed _gavot._

Aziraphale kissed the laugh out of his mouth, fierce and sure. “We _will_. Neither side has any idea who they’re dealing with.”

Something niggled at the back of Crowley’s mind at that--but he had already had one very important idea in the last too few hours, and so many things had happened. He desperately needed a good sleep, but he couldn’t--he didn’t think his body would let him risk waking up to find Aziraphale had gone.

But his body was also a traitor of the first order: as soon as he’d thought of sleep, his jaw nearly unhinged itself in a yawn. Right in Aziraphale’s face.

“Goodness,” the angel said, but fond. Endlessly fond. “Plans will keep until the morning, my dear. Up you get,” and effortlessly hauled Crowley upright. Even more effortlessly picked him right up and off his feet, and Crowley didn’t even have the strength to protest _that_ , so. Bed was probably called for.

 _I’ll just rest one eye,_ Crowley thought nonsensically as the angel deposited him beneath the soft, slate-grey duvet. Crowley felt a brush of lips against his forehead and shivered weakly, grasping at Aziraphale’s hand when he went to pull away.

“I’ll only be a moment,” Aziraphale promised. “Just going to clean up the mess. Count to ten and I’ll be back.”

Crowley hummed an affirmative and began counting, listening to the sounds of the most cherished being in the world move through his apartment. Smelling the bright ozone tang of a miracle so thoroughly ridding the flat of holy water that it stripped down several layers of paint.

Five, four…

Soft padding feet, the rasp of hands brushing away imaginary dust with supreme prejudice.

Three, two…

A duvet lifted, cold air and then warm, warm, warm. An arm encircling him with determination, with intent.

One.

The first day of the rest of their lives.

  


Crowley woke two hours later with a thought ringing like a bell. He sat bolt upright.

“Crowley? What is it?” Aziraphale said, quite awake and blinking owlishly.

“What did you mean when you said, ‘I go too fast for you, Crowley,’” he demanded, the words tumbled over in his head so often they were smooth as river stones--but the next part was clumsy, tripping, sputtering, "if you tried to--if you wanted--in _Rome."_

Aziraphale huffed and pulled him down again, tucking the duvet up under his chin. “Ninety miles an hour in London, really, dear boy. I’ve only just convinced myself you bend the laws of physics.”

**Author's Note:**

> [I'm still (inexplicably, ineffably) on tumblr! ](https://queenklu.tumblr.com/post/186614536427/was-blind-but-now-i-see-queenklu-good-omens) Please consider giving this link a reblog to share this fic around!


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